A long-running research and conservation management project requires three people to work on Gough Island in the central South Atlantic Ocean for 13 months, with an additional month for training prior to departure.  These contract positions are designed primarily to conduct annual monitoring of breeding seabirds (two positions), and to control the invasive plant Procumbent Pearlwort Sagina procumbens (one position, although all staff will take part in all activities and will be trained in rope access).

The seabird monitoring positions are responsible for annual monitoring of breeding success, survival, population counts, and other field work for 14 breeding species [including four ACAP-listed species] throughout the entire year.  The Sagina position is responsible for control and eradication work on Sagina from the steep cliffs adjacent to the weather station on Gough Island. If required, training in rope-access techniques (IRATA Level 1 or equivalent) will be provided prior to departure to Gough Island for team members.

The candidates will be joining and living with the South African National Antarctic Programme (SANAP) over-wintering team of usually six people, and will also be required to work within the requirements of SANAP’s over-wintering teams. It will be an asset if the post holders have prior experience of working with one or more other team members.

A female Tristan Albatross incubates on Gough Island, photograph by John Cooper

Requirements–Monitoring (two positions)

The successful applicants should have experience in:

Bird banding/ringing, safe handling of birds,
Conducting surveys and censuses for breeding seabirds,
Managing large amounts of data,
Abseil rope-access techniques, and/or climbing experience, and
Undertaking fieldwork in a mountainous environment and inclement weather conditions.

Additional skills that would benefit a candidate include:

Banding/ringing permit
Blood sampling, attaching biologging devices, and
Post-graduate research degree.

Requirements – Sagina (one position)

The successful applicants should have experience in:

Abseil rope-access techniques, and/or climbing experience,
Undertaking fieldwork in a mountainous environment and inclement weather conditions,
Working on remote islands (or equivalent remote locations), and
Undertaking plant eradication projects and firm understanding of eradication principles.

Additional skills that would benefit a candidate include alien plant eradication techniques

Requirements – all positions

Applicants must demonstrate:

An ability to live and work in a very small team on one of the world’s most remote islands for a prolonged period,
High levels of physical fitness, adaptability and a strong work ethic, and

Aptitude and/or proven experience in successfully undertaking unsupervised fieldwork, with safety as a first priority.

The successful applications will have skills/qualifications in:

A degree or equivalent qualifications or experience in a science/conservation discipline, ideally with some work experience in conservation/wildlife related fieldwork and research

Details of the jobs

Conduct fieldwork according to a work-plan devised by the project managers

Assist biological research, Sagina control, fieldwork and monitoring as required

Make day-to-day decisions about work priorities and fieldwork protocols

Maintain accurate records of the work and computer databases of the work

Regularly report to & update the project managers on progress

Be responsible for data quality and reporting, and on-site training as needed (Senior Research Assistant only)

Salary: £16,000 - £18,000 (Research Assistant), £19,000 - £21,000 (Senior Research Assistant) a year, plus transport, food, and accommodation.

Starting date: 04 July 2016 – 25 October 2017; please note, due to the preparation requirements needed for training, the start date is fixed.

How to apply: Send a cover letter outlining your experience and qualifications, CV, and contact information (including telephone numbers) for three references as a single PDF document to John Kelly, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, UK  (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) by midnight BST on 31 May 2016.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 18 May 2016

Claire Tancell (Conservation Science Group, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, UK) and colleagues have published in the journal Biological Conservation on using tracked procellariiform seabirds to further marine spatial planning in the South Atlantic.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Tracking of seabirds at sea is valuable for marine spatial planning.  Many seabirds are of conservation concern, including albatrosses and large petrels (Procellariiformes) which face a major threat from mortality in fisheries.  We examine how important areas used by seven of these species breeding at South Georgia change throughout the year, based on tracking data collected between 1991 and 2012, and discuss the implications for spatial management in the region within the current jurisdictional framework.

Foraging areas overlapped with a patchwork of national and international management organizations, and areas outside clear jurisdiction.  National waters were generally unimportant, besides that of South Georgia.  The other exception was Falkland Islands coastal waters, which were important for wandering albatrosses Diomedea exulans during incubation, and were opened for new oil and gas drilling in 2015.  The marine protected area established at the South Orkney Islands protects very little habitat used by the tracked seabirds; however, a northern extension of this would benefit a number of species at different breeding stages.

The area around South Georgia was important year-round, including in periods when fishing is allowed.  A contiguous region to the north of this was also important and here, mechanisms should be improved to ensure compliance with bird bycatch mitigation recommendations.  The study highlighted the use of tracking for identifying key areas for pelagic albatrosses and petrels, and the advantages of incorporating these data into a multilateral approach to marine spatial planning to ensure the future conservation of these highly-threatened marine predators.”

Wandering Albatross at sea in the South Atlantic, photograph by John Chardine

With thanks to Richard Phillips.

Reference:

Tancell, C., Sutherland, W.J. & Phillips, R.A. 2016.  Marine spatial planning for the conservation of albatrosses and large petrels breeding at South Georgia.  Biological Conservation  198: 165-176.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 17 May 2016

Pamela Michael (Hawai’i Pacific University at Oceanic Institute, Waimanalo, Hawai'i, USA) and colleagues have published in the on-line/open-access journal PLOS ONE on aspects of the at-sea distribution of Black-footed Albatrosses Phoebastria nigripes.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“At-sea surveys facilitate the study of the distribution and abundance of marine birds along standardized transects, in relation to changes in the local environmental conditions and large-scale oceanographic forcing.  We analyzed the form and the intensity of black-footed albatross (Phoebastria nigripes: BFAL) spatial dispersion off central California, using five years (2004–2008) of vessel-based surveys of seven replicated survey lines.  We related BFAL patchiness to local, regional and basin-wide oceanographic variability using two complementary approaches: a hypothesis-based model and an exploratory analysis. The former tested the strength and sign of hypothesized BFAL responses to environmental variability, within a hierarchical atmosphere—ocean context.  The latter explored BFAL cross-correlations with atmospheric / oceanographic variables. While albatross dispersion was not significantly explained by the hierarchical model, the exploratory analysis revealed that aggregations were influenced by static (latitude, depth) and dynamic (wind speed, upwelling) environmental variables.  Moreover, the largest BFAL patches occurred along the survey lines with the highest densities, and in association with shallow banks. In turn, the highest BFAL densities occurred during periods of negative Pacific Decadal Oscillation index values and low atmospheric pressure.  The exploratory analyses suggest that BFAL dispersion is influenced by basin-wide, regional-scale and local environmental variability. Furthermore, the hypothesis-based model highlights that BFAL do not respond to oceanographic variability in a hierarchical fashion.  Instead, their distributions shift more strongly in response to large-scale ocean—atmosphere forcing.  Thus, interpreting local changes in BFAL abundance and dispersion requires considering diverse environmental forcing operating at multiple scales.”

Black-footed Albatross at sea, photograph by Aleks Terauds

Reference:

Michael, P.E., Jahncke, J., Hyrenbach, K.D. 2016.  Placing local aggregations in a larger-scale context: hierarchical modeling of black-footed albatross dispersion.  PLOS ONE.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0153783.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 16 May 2016

Friday the 13th is traditionally an inauspicious day but ACAP’s Advisory Committee was pleased to close two weeks of successful meetings in La Serena, Chile today by adopting the final report of its Ninth Meeting (AC9).

Before the report could be adopted elections were required to appoint Chief Officers for the Advisory Committee and its three Working Groups for the next three-year period, which will conclude at the end of the Advisory Committee meeting (AC11), expected to be held in 2019 after the Sixth Session of the Meeting of the Parties in 2018.  Another important decision to be confirmed today is where and when will ACAP meet again, with AC10 due to be held next year.  Watch this space!

To ready themselves for today’s important session, attendees were taken yesterday by our gracious Chilean hosts on an all-day outing inland into the fertile Elqui Valley.  Setting off with what we all thought was a packed lunch of sandwiches and fruit (which was intended to be just a snack, known as padkos – literally "road food" – in South Africa) we ended up sitting down for a splendid three-course lunch in Vicuña’s Terral Hotel & Spa.  Before that we made a visit to the village of Monte Grande in the foothills of the Andes to visit a small museum dedicated to the internationally renowned Chilean poet and diplomat Gabriela Mistral (1889 –1957), who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945 "for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world".  Pablo Neruda, also an internationally recognized Chilean poet (who wrote a poem on the Wandering Albatross entitled Oda a un Albatros Errante) had met Mistral  when he was a teenager.

Following this literary visit the comfortable bus took us to the Tourist Centre and Museum Pisco Capel near the town of Vicuña where we visited the underground museum, the pisco distilling and bottling factory and - for those among us not teetotallers - a tasting bar.  Pisco is described as “a colourless or yellowish-to-amber coloured brandy produced in the wine-making regions of Peru and Chile”.

After a group photograph next to an interesting cactus (that came with its own warning not to touch), a short drive took us to the above-mentioned lunch and then back to La Serena for an evening of reading and commenting on the draft AC report.  Before dawn today the report was ready for adoption due to the nocturnal activities of an ever hard-working Secretariat.  Cheers!

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 13 May 2016